Perspective: The anti-government ideas fueling anti-vaxxers
A sign at the Rockland County Health Department in Pomona, N.Y., explaining last month's state of emergency because of a measles outbreak. By Julia Bowes Julia Bowes is a history PhD candidate at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and a Jefferson Scholars National Fellow at the University of Virginia.
While much of the public debate on the anti-vaxxers centers on their skepticism about the science and safety of vaccination, a deep-seated resentment of state power also courses through the movement. Indeed, it is critical to recognize that much of what fans the flames of the anti-vaccination movement is a vehement defense of parental rights and a rejection of the state’s powers over children.
It was a sound policy for both medical and administrative reasons. First, as school population swelled in the United States, crowded classrooms, particularly in urban areas, quickly became incubators for the spread of infectious diseases. Second, the growing apparatus of public schools presented a unique site for public health campaigns. Because children were legally defined as dependents, the state possessed more power over children than it did over the adult population.
In many respects, the strategies of anti-vaccination activists in the early 20th century presaged much educational activism over the past half-century. In 1911, in the affluent suburbs of northern New Jersey, 350 families in Bergen County avoided vaccinating their children by threatening to move en masse to create a new school district if vaccination requirements were enforced.
In the late 1960s, however, as public trust in government plummeted because of the Vietnam War, urban crises and Watergate, anti-vaccination activism resurged.
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